Celebrate Halloween with dodgeball tournament

Sign-up for teams is now under way for Haywood Regional Health & Fitness Center’s Night of Fright Dodgeball Tournament, to be held from 6 to 9 p.m, Oct. 28.

Teams for the tournament may consist of four to seven participants, sporting their best Halloween costume.

Last year’s event attracted 16 teams and more than 150 participants, and this year may be even bigger and even more ghoulish.

“Will last year’s champs the “Nuts-n-Hunnies” be able to retain their title for another year? Or will runners-up, the “Young Gunz,” be out for vengeance?” Aquatics and Recreation Coordinator Shawn Smathers asks.

Reading Room

Like some other readers I know, my taste in books these last 20 years or so has shifted from fiction to non-fiction, especially history, biography, and literary studies. I still follow certain novelists — Anne Tyler, Pat Conroy, James Lee Burke, and others — and still review novels for this paper, but find that works of fiction simply don’t appeal as much as when I was in my twenties and thirties, when I read stacks of novels and poetry.